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D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3
by Chiara Lubich
“Whoever has two cloaks should share with
the person who has none. And whoever has
food should do likewise” (Lk 3:11).
During this period of Advent, our preparation time for Christmas, the
figure of John the Baptist is once again brought to the fore. He had been
sent by God to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. To those
who crowded around to hear him, he strongly urged to change their way
of life: “Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance”
(Lk 3:8). And to those who asked: “What then should we do?”
(Lk 3:10), he replied:
“Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.”
Why should I give what is mine to another person? Since we were both created by God, the other person is my brother, or my sister; therefore, he or she is part of me. “I cannot hurt you without harming myself,” (1) Gandhi once said. We were created as a gift for one another, in the image of God who is Love. We have the divine law of love in our blood.
When he came among us, Jesus explained it very clearly in his new commandment:
“As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn
13:34). It is the “law of heaven,” the life of the Holy Trinity
brought down on earth, the heart of the Gospel. As the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit live in full communion in heaven, to the point of being one
(see Jn 17:11), we on earth are truly ourselves inasmuch as we live the
reciprocity of love. And just as the Son says to the Father: “Everything
of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine” (Jn 17:10), so
too our love reaches fulfillment when we share with one another not only
spiritual goods, but also material goods.
The needs of our neighbor are the needs of all of us. Is someone unemployed?
I am unemployed. Is someone’s mother sick? I help her as if she were
my mother. Are there others who are hungry? It’s as if I were hungry
and I try to find food for them as I would for myself.
This is the experience of the first Christians of Jerusalem: “The
community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed any
of his possessions as his own, but they had everything in common”
(Acts 4:32). A sharing or communion of goods was not obligatory, and yet
they practiced it intensely. As the apostle Paul explains, “The relief
of others ought not to impoverish you; there should be a certain equality.
Your plenty at the present time should supply their need so that their
surplus may one day supply your need, with equality as the result”
(2 Cor 8:13-14).
St. Basil the Great says: “The bread you set aside belongs to the
hungry; the coat you store in your trunk belongs to the naked; the money
you keep hidden belongs to the needy.”
And St. Augustine says: “The surplus of the rich belongs to the
poor. Even the poor can help one another: one can offer his legs to the
other who is lame, someone else his eyes to guide the blind, still another
can visit the sick.” (2)
“Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.”
Today too we can live like the early Christians. The Gospel is not a
utopia. This is demonstrated, for example, by the new ecclesial Movements
that the Holy Spirit has brought about in the Church to help revive, in
all its freshness, the passionate evangelical drive of the early Christians,
and to respond to the great challenges of a world burdened by many injustices
and oppressive poverty.
I remember that in the early days of the Focolare Movement the new charism filled our hearts with a very special love for the poor. Whenever we encountered poor people on the street, we wrote down their addresses in a notebook so that we could visit them later and help them. They were Jesus: “You did it to me” (Mt 25:40).
After we visited them in their humble homes, we invited them to dinner.
We set the table using our best tablecloth, the best dishes and cutlery,
the most appealing food. In that first focolare, a focolarina (3) was
seated beside a poor person, a focolarina and then a poor person, all
around the table.
At one point we felt the Lord was asking us to truly live poverty in
order to serve the poor and everyone else. There, in the living room of
that first focolare house, each one put in a pile on the floor whatever
she felt was extra: an overcoat, a pair of gloves, a hat. Someone even
offered a fur coat. And today, in order to give to the poor, we have business
enterprises that provide employment and distribute a share of their profits!
But there is still a great deal to do to help “the poor.”
“Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.”
We might not realize it, but we have many riches that we can share. We
need to sharpen our sensitivity and learn more about how to help concretely,
in order to discover the way to live real brotherhood. We have love in
our hearts to give, gestures of friendship to offer, and joy to share.
We can give our time, we can pray, we can share inner riches through the
written or spoken word. At times we have things that we can put at the
disposal of others, such as purses, pens, books, money, homes, cars. We
might accumulate many things, thinking that one day they might be useful.
In the meantime there are people nearby who have urgent need of them.
Just as a plant absorbs from the soil only the amount of water it needs,
so we should try to have only what we need. Actually it’s good every
now and then to experience that something is lacking; it’s better
to be a little poor than to be a little rich.
“If we would all be content with what’s necessary and we would
give our surplus to those in need,” St. Basil says, “there would
no longer be the rich and the poor.” (4)
Let’s try, let’s begin to live in this way. Jesus will not fail to send us a hundred times as much, and then we will be able to continue to give. In the end, he will tell us that what we have given, to whomever it might be, we have given it to him.
1) W. Mühs, Parole del cuore, Milan 1996, p. 82; 2) Aforismi
e citazioni cristiane, Piemme, 1994, p. 44-45; 3) Member of the small
core community of the Focolare Movement: 4) Ibid., p. 44.
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